Merrill Lynch Estimates "Cloud Computing" To Be $100 Billion Market

What do the following companies all have in common: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, EMC, VMware, IBM, Sun, Dell, Akamai, SalesForce.com, NetSuite, and Activision. Answer: Cloud Computing. Merrill Lynch analysts reckon that by 2011 the volume of cloud computing market opportunity will amount to $160BN, including $95N in business and productivity apps (e-mail, office, CRM, etc.) and $65BN in online advertising.

Merrill Lynch recently issued a research note: “The Cloud Wars: $100+ billion at stake” (07 May 2008). The analysts write that by 2011 the volume of cloud computing market opportunity would amount to $160bn, including $95bn in business and productivity apps (email, office, CRM, etc.) and $65bn in online advertising.

The authors identify 10 companies + 2 “unconventional plays” with exposure to Cloud Computing growth. I tried to sketch their market position in a diagram (my own interpretation):

Top 10 (+2) Cloud companies

It is interesting that Merrill Lynch researchers added Activision to their top cloud company list. They are absolutely correct, though. If you manage to operate a 10 million WoW gamer user base in a distributed network, you definitely deserve to be in the champions league.

I will pick up other interesting aspects of the note in later blog posts. Comments, ideas?

[This post appeared originally here and is republished in full by kind permission of the author, who retains copyright.]

Markus Klems is a research assistant at Germany-based FZI Research Center for Information Technology. His main areas of interests are cloud computing, grids, distributed programming and agile Web development - the technological point of view as well as business models. He blogs at http://markusklems.wordpress.com/.

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